On Saturday, December 7th, 2013 an amazing event called “Help Portrait” swept across the globe. I lead a group and assembled one of the Help Portrait events right here in Philadelphia.What is Help Portrait? In a word, it's the most awesome photographic, charitable, story-telling, story-giving, picture-creating, tear-jerking, perspective-gaining, thought-provoking, and fun events that one could conjure up.

Help Portrait happens when a group of photographers, hair stylists, makeup artists, and volunteers get together and spend a day giving portraits away to those in need. For free. The people we photographed were characters of every walk of life; fathers, mothers, families, and fun-loving kids.

Partnering up with a number of Philadelphia photographers and artists (credits later on in this post) we had an event that went off without a hitch! I owe a massive “thank you” to everyone involved for helping to make this what it was and what it will be in the future! Without the selfless giving of others, we could never have made this happen!

During the event the best moment I experienced was when one 79 year-old gentleman-who had never been photographed before-looked at me and told me that he now "had a photograph he could give to his granddaughters so they would always remember him”. How cool and incredible is that? That’s a moment that will not soon be lost on me. Perspective gained.

I’d be remiss if I didn't mention that this whole worldwide event was started several years ago by the fantastic Nashville photographer, Jeremy Cowart. (Jeremy hates being mentioned in these articles, but credit where credit is due. *bow* )

Daughter of local photographer, a film student, avid Star Wars fan, and budding young fashion model, Katie Shea Walters sure has her hands full modeling, walking in events such as the recent “Philadelphia Fashion Week”, oh, and-as mentioned-she’s a film student.

Katie and I first got together in January of 2013 and have worked together a couple times since then. These images are from our very first shoot together. This was very much a run-and-gun style shoot as we ran around a Philadelphia area town called Manayunk and captured images in several different areas of town. This shoot was a stylized, fashion-influenced, environmental portrait shoot to get Katie some unique and fun pictures that she could add to her portfolio.

The light source in these images was a single light, a 400W head with a 39” Rotalux Deep Octa bank (one of my personal favorite lighting modifiers!)

Musician Photography Bridgeport, PA: Brodi Valos & Gethin Lewis

Relaxing in Nags Head

After spending some quality time relaxing and shooting some photos in the small coastal town of Nags Head in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina I hooked up with Brodi and Gethin on my drive home to shoot some photos for general purpose use and for promotional material for their music.

When driving for 7+ hours it is sweet relief to have a break worked into your driving plans. Mine came as I rolled into Bridgeport, PA. It was a brisk, cool evening and the light was amazing. All the photographs I shot using a single light on a stand an toyed with what I could using the ambient light (what little there was) in the scene.

Brodi Valos

Brodi Valos is a talented and perpetually hard working musician/recording artist who performs throughout the Mid-Atlantic region with Philadelphia-based group Dirty Electrick. Brodi, who himself hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is recognized for his roots rock sense of style in fashion, performance, and in his music videos.

Inspired by classic music icons such as AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, & Ray Charles, and even my all-time favorite group, Social Distortion, Brodi creates a wonderful blend of Rock and Country in his tracks that you’re sure to enjoy.

Did He Just Say 'Ron Paul'?

Brodi is a man after my own spirit and, like myself, views Dr. Ron Paul as the best of the candidates for presidential election in the upcoming 2012 Presidential election as we rapidly approach the conclusion of the Republican Natl. Primaries.

Gethin Lewis is a musician and guitarist from Philadelphia, PA who, along with playing music with Brodi, creates his own Psychedelic brand of music. A great personality and a bunch of fun to photograph!

We had a great time hangin’ out and shooting these photos and spent some time chatting after we put the camera down. Check out some of my favorites below!

Creative, Commercial Style Portraits with Model Diana Di Bella

As we wrap up and finish out year 2011 I’ve thought back on some of the crazier/more difficult (i.e. fun!) shoots of 2011, one of which would have to be Diana.

It was cold, rainy, and mildly windy in the earlier part of the morning but the clouds broke for us just before we’d scheduled to start shooting.

Uh-Oh

Our location had been plowed under and a field of corn replaced what had been a nice park-area to photograph in. As far as I could tell there was no park left and no getting into what had replaced it and I didn’t have much of a “plan B”, but I managed to find two small locations to shoot in very nearby which turned out to work great!

The rain came back and pestered us throughout the shoot, I dropped my camera in the mud a couple times, got mildly wet, slipped a few more times, and risked life and limb (well… at least the ‘life’ of the lighting gear) to capture some photographs.

Distinct Pleasure

Yasmine is an talented and beautiful young Egyptian/Moroccan/Turkish college student(/model) attending college right here in Eastern Pennsylvania. I had the distinct pleasure of working with her about 2 months ago shooting some general purpose portraits and was delighted with how they turned out!

There was a bit of rain in the forecast for the date we'd picked to setup the shoot, but decided to press on and make it happen rain or shine! Typically when a shoot gets cancelled due to the weather forecast, the weather man ends up being wrong and we get beautiful weather, it's only when we decide to ignore the forecast that the forecast stands true!
We ended up with a very cloudy sky that morning and there was a brisk breeze which occasionally cut through our location all the while we were shooting further enhancing the cool/damp early-autumn air and, in the end, combining to make beautiful shooting weather throughout our shoot. It worked out wonderfully and we got lots of very soft, wrapping light! Photographer's dream!

Darienne Rose – Drexel Hill Singer/Song Writer

A self-titled “Rock Vixen”, Darienne Rose is an up and coming Pop/Rock singer/songwriter out of the Philadelphia area. She contacted me about doing some photography which would help capture her image as an artist and individual for media press-kits that she could send to record labels, radio stations, and more.

Clean Fashion Style with Nikki

I am preparing for a series I want to shoot over the course of the winter which was inspired by a specific type of advertising (It's a secret!). In my preparation I had a model come in and shoot with me as I nailed down some of the final lighting tweaks, hair and make up issues, as well as worked the post-shoot, post production workflow to ensure a consistency in the looks produced by the various shoots for the series. Nikki came out and shot with me and was absolutely great!

Portfolio Building

Getting together and shooting for a couple hours in the late evening often yields some pretty awesome results. Here we have a young model I photographed a few weeks ago in King of Prussia to help him build his portfolio with a variety of looks (we had a few other looks, but these few images happened to be my favorite).

Twilight is Golden Light

We hung around in the park where we were shooting until the sun set below the horizon and took advantage of some electric color in the sky, that coupled with some passing storm clouds which further added to the amazing color we had that evening.

Check out a few of the photos we captured below and I threw in a happy mistake which I converted to black and white. Sometimes complete mistakes turn out great!

No Location, No Plans, Creativity At Its Finest

It’s a great change up to go out and have a fun morning or evening of photography without any idea of what you’re going to shoot until you get into a location, or a general area and wander until you find a location. I photographed Rachel a few weeks ago and we picked out her clothing and met on a street corner in the city and just wandered around taking as many photos as we liked until it was too dark to shoot.

Photography and Creative Control

What little plan I had going into this photo shoot was to just keep it simple and shoot some general purpose portraits of her. She didn’t have anything specific she needed other than general purpose head and full-length shots for a project she was working on and there was no strict set idea of what she had to have so that left plenty of room for creative liberty and control.

Camera, Lighting, and Technical Settings

Lighting was a Canon 580 EXII speedlite modified with Westcott’s amazing 28” Apollo portable (collapsing, umbrella style) softbox and a hand held reflector for a little fill as needed. Everything was shot using a 24-70mm lens and I believe I stayed between f4 and f8 all evening long.

Thanks Rach!

All things considered Rachel killed it, she was awesome and we got some great photos to show for it. Good times.